Monday, October 14, 2013

Vietnam Blues

Lem Genovese returned from Vietnam with two burning
passions—playing guitar and chasing elusive faces of the war.

“My VA counselor asked me what I hoped to accomplish writing
this book,” Genovese notes in his 550-plus-page self-published memoir,
Tunesmith Chronicles: A Musical History Tour. “I gave him a simple answer. ‘To
get it right…’

“The US
involvement during the Indochina Cultural Exchange Program has caused enough
dissention, derision, confusion and damage. As a veteran I have seen both sides
of that polarizing experience and like [Ulysses S] Grant, long to see the sense
of hostilities subside into a mutual understanding of what is truly needed to
learn valuable lessons from a bitter war to enable this nation to approach that
more ‘perfect UNION.’”

Genovese’s quest put him on the road roaming the country as
a hard-strumming bard of Vietnam
veteran blues, as a crusty college student trying to pin down the unsettling
role of Vietnam
vets in American society, and as an old-timer National Guard medic trying to
protect less experienced soldiers in the 1991 Gulf War.

He still harbors a white phosphorus-hot anger about a lot of
things he encountered in war zones in Southeast Asia and the Middle East, as
well as stateside. And each outrageous incident or moral injury is buttressed
by pages of deeply researched background information—ranging from Agent Orange
to post-traumatic stress disorder, war crimes to billion-dollar wastage of
military equipment.

“Frankly, after being exposed to dioxin in the Mekong Delta,
the toxic cocktails in Desert Storm and 40 years of bad luck, the author
relishes this opportunity to follow in the large footsteps of Army Air Corps
General Billy Mitchell in one regard, sacrificing what little reputation this
particular retired Army/Guard staff sergeant field medic has left … to better
protect this nation’s future,” he writes in introduction to a section in which
he lambastes “war profiteers” with more than 60 pages of examples.

Nearly lost amid his furious, fulminating diatribes is a
story about a soldier from Des Moines,
Iowa, who found salvation in
making music. “After returning to Iowa
from my 13 month tour of duty in the Mekong Delta of South Vietnam, MUSIC was
my form of therapy and has kept me from going off the deep end (drugs, alcohol
and suicide) many times in the ensuing years,” he states deep in this massive memoir.

As he notes more succinctly on his Yankee Medic Records
website, Lem Genovese’s aim is “to be a musical bridge that promotes compassion,
healing and understanding.”

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About Me

I'm a poet, journalist, author and editor of several books, including A Citizen's Guide to Grassroots Campaigns, Earth Songs: New and Selected Poems, and Winning Hearts & Minds: War Poems by Vietnam Veterans. I also teach writing workshops and college journalism courses. For more information: www.janbarry.net.